Gearing up for Dads, Dudes, and Doing It with Notes from Daddy Land

In preparation for our Dads, Dudes, and Doing It event coming up, I wanted to share some posts from The Man Files -- a regular feature by author/blogger Shira Tarrant -- over at the group blog I edit, Girl w/Pen. The latest entry, titled "Stuff Hallmark Doesn't Put on Father's Day Cards," is by Men Speak Out contributor, school social worker, community activist, lecturer, and writer and a founder of The Real MEN’s Project, Dani Meier.

As Shira explains, Dani writes about his experience as both a custodial and non-custodial parent. This stuff doesn’t fit neatly on a Hallmark card, but it should! It comes from the heart and speaks to so many, whether we are fathers, have fathers, or watch our children’s relationships with their own dads unfold.

You can read Dani's post right here.

Thank You Princeton!

We had a great event last weekend at Princeton, despite having to compete with raucous reunion festivities. (It turns out that Princeton alumni are very serious about their reunion-ing.)

Some of the great questions/insights that audience members brought up included:

What happens when women become more financially or professionally successful than their male partners? One woman in the audience feels that the contrast cost her a marriage!

We need to expand the work/life conversation beyond "get as much help as you can" in privileged circles. How can we see it as a collective fight, not a personal failure?

Are women biologically predisposed to want to spend time with their babies in a way that feminists don't feel comfortable admitting? An OB-GYN assures everyone that no woman can possibly know how she'll feel (in terms of desires around staying home or getting back to work), until she's in that post-birth moment.

Perhaps the 1970s feminist movement was not as cohesive as it is somehow portrayed to younger women. Would love to talk more about this...

Thanks to the amazing organizers, Amada, Jennifer, and Chloe, and all of those who came out for the event!

Dads, Dudes, and Doing It at the Brooklyn Museum June 20 @ 2pm

Is the relative explosion of Mr. Moms proof that things are finally changing or is it just a temporary sign of the dire economic times?

In a world that is finally waking up to women’s sexual fluidity, are men going to be left out in the cold? And, why are some women still attracted to assholes, in reality, if they claim to be so interested in sensitive men, in theory?

When are more men going to care about work/family balance? And what the heck is the role of men in the feminist movement, anyway?

These are just some of the questions that your WomenGirlsLadies team with tackle in this provocative discussion at the Brooklyn Museum right in time for Father’s Day. Representing the perspectives of four unique generations, we’ll wrestle with women’s ever-evolving relationship with the men in their lives—fathers, partners, and sons—and the men out in the world—from Rush Limbaugh to Barack Obama.

Here's some of our recent audience reaction: Shelly Heller, Director of the Women’s Leader Program at George Washington University calls us, “engaging, clear, direct, and often extremely personal,” and Maya Wainhaus, Program Coordinator at 92YTribeca, says “The panelists left the whole room feeling energized and ready to take charge!”

Come and join the long overdue conversation, with special guests Susan Faludi, Jessica Valenti, and Trey Ellis among others. The event is FREE but bring your voice!

We're thrilled that the event is co-sponsored by the Women’s Media Center, 85 Broads, and the National Council for Research on Women too.

Gearing Up for Princeton

As we're preparing for our much-anticipated appearance at Princeton's alumni weekend, (Saturday, May 30, 4pm in McCosh 10) we've been mulling over some of the most important questions these days concerning women and work/the economy. Here are a few we've come up with:

What was the climate for women and work when and where you were born, and how did that inform the way you grew up thinking about your own possibilities?
What do you think is peculiar about your generation's relationship to work and/or money? What's media hype (i.e. my generation=entitled) and what's accurate?
What is the unfinished business of feminism, esp, when it comes to work and family issues?

Holler if you've got other suggestions.

Bea Arthur: How One Powered Women Spoke Up

[Note: I'm sharing this article I wrote about Bea Arthur's passing here because the character she played on "Maude" was such a classic depiction of the generation of feminists during the 1970's. Of course, those sophisticated women like Maude in New York were way ahead of me and my peers out in West Texas. Still, the fundamental human stories have always been the same across time and generations. You can see additional video and photos here.]

4/25/09 Actress Bea Arthur died today at age 86.

She was a Tony-winning stage actress when Norman Lear saw her and tapped her for a guest role in his famous "All in the Family" series, where she played Edith Bunker's mouthy liberal cousin Maude who was always at odds with Edith's conservative husband Archie. "Maude" soon became a sitcom of its own, and Arthur's character continued taking on the significant social and political issues of the day--speaking up about all those subjects we were warned against bringing up in polite company, from sex and infidelity to politics and activism to death and depression.

It was the mid-1970's at the height of second wave feminism, and if ever there were proof that feminists have a sense of humor, it was in Maude's way of playing even the most serious of subjects for laughs.

In this classic exchange between Maude her husband Walter, who arrives home to find Maude distraught, the show dealt with abortion--a first on a major sitcom to do so forthrightly.


Walter: Maude, did you wreck the car again?

Maude: Did you hear that, everybody? DID YOU HEAR THAT? Not "Maude, are you sick?" Or "Maude, are you unhappy?" Or even, "Maude, are you pregnant?" No, "Maude, did you wreck the car again?"

Walter: You're right, darling. You're absolutely right. I'm sorry. So tell me, are you sick?

Maude: No.

Walter: Are you unhappy?

Maude: No.

Walter: Are you pregnant?

Maude: Yes.

They go through all aspects of the decision process. Maude, already a grandmother in her late 40's, decides she should not go through with the pregnancy and has an abortion. Watch the video to see how her daughter speaks of abortion as it should be.

It was a little slice of realism rarely seen today, when the option of abortion is so often pushed again into the virtual back room and rarely mentioned in pop culture; the movie "Knocked Up", for example, uses the euphemism "rhymes with smashmortion" rather than mention this--the most common women's surgical procedure--by name. And soap operas are famous for those well-timed miscarriages that avoid the sticky subject of real women making reproductive choices, while leaving the full drama of mistimed pregnancies available to their script lines.

After "Maude", Arthur had a chance to open up for public discussion yet one more previously off-limits topic: aging, especially the issues women face aging in a youth-oriented culture. She played Dorothy on "The Golden Girls," the NBC comedy hit that ran from 1985-92. The show explored the lives of three older women sharing a household in Miami with Dorothy's widowed mother, Sophia (played by Estelle Getty). Besides Arthur's character, there was Betty White playing the ditsy Rose and Rue McClanahan as the sexy senior, Blanche.

Arthur won Emmys for both "Maude" and "Golden Girls". She was inducted into Academy of Television Arts & Sciences Hall of Fame in 2008, an honor well-deserved for her lifetime of extraordinary work.

But personally, I am most grateful to Bea Arthur, (and of course to Norman Lear and everyone associated with "Maude") for bringing the reality of unintended pregnancy and abortion out of the back room and into the real human story where it belongs. May she rest in peace and her memory be a blessing to us all.



http://www.GloriaFeldt.com/powered-women

72-27

Check out this wonderful intergenerational feminist blog, 72-27, by a couple of Christian women. There is incredible depth and breadth in the topics they discuss. An excerpt:

By making known what is happening to our sisters around the world, we may be doing our little part to pull up the shades, let in the light, and increase awareness of how much work we have yet to do to help girls and women dream their dreams and experience the light of education and empowerment. And we need men to help, too. Women can’t do it alone, because we’re all in this together. Jesus told us not to hide our light under a bushel, so we need to spread the light we’ve been given.

Princeton or Bust!

Good news all you Jersey gals and guys--we're headed to Princeton University on May 30th for the alumni festivities. We'll keep you posted on timing and exact location. Thanks to Amada, at the Women's Center, for making it all happen!